This is a blog about pancakes from different countries around the world.

Welcome to Our Pancake Blog

Welcome to Our Pancake Blog!

So, what does a married couple with no children and free time do? Why think of creative ways to eat of course. So begins the Around the World in Pancake Sundays project.

One day while eating pancakes made from sprouted wheat and chocolate chips, we started talking about how fun it would be to eat a different type of pancake each Sunday. I know, you must be stuck on the whole sprouted wheat pancakes. I'm sure many are thinking eeeeewwww, sounds yucky right now. However, they are actually quite tasty. We were given our first taste of them by a friend last New Year's Eve (well, technically the morning after New Year's Eve). We were so enamored of them that we went searching for our own sprouted wheat to make some for ourselves a couple of months later.

O.K., enough digressing. While eating the above mentioned pancakes, the conversation started about eating a different type of pancake each Sunday. We began to wonder if we could find a different type of pancake for each Sunday for a whole year. So we set ourselves the challenge of finding a unique pancake recipe to try out each Sunday.

We continued to talk about this idea for the next couple of weeks. We started thinking about how most cultures actually have their own versions of pancakes. This led us to try to find a pancake from each country in the world. We finally began our project last Sunday, and decided to chronicle it here in this blog.

So welcome to our pancake blog, we hope you enjoy it as much as we are sure to enjoy making and eating them! Heck, we hope you make some and enjoy them too!

Monday, December 10, 2012

On The Third Night of Chanukah, My Latke Gave to Me - Sweet Potato, sort of

We've now reached the third night of Chanukah, and I think my tummy might not make it to the 8th night. Latkes are VERY filling when eaten night after night. Here's a cool picture Sam took of the chanukia tonight.

So we were going to make a "modernist" (as it was described by Saveur magazine) style latke tonight, but we had some trouble tracking down potato starch. We DID (key word being did) have a box of it in the cupboard, but we somehow used it all up. I thought it would be readily available at the grocery store, but I was sadly mistaken. After the second grocery store and no luck. Sam informed me that he bought it at the Vons/Pavillions store the last time he bought it. Oh well! The one grocery store I didn't go to.

While at the second grocery store, I decided to pick up a couple of sweet potatoes and come up with my own version of a sweet potato latke. I say it's sort of a sweet potato latke because I did use some regular potatoes as well. Anyway, on to the recipe. Here's what you'll need:

First you'll need to finely chop your shallots and mince your garlic. Once you've done this, place both in a large bowl and add in the cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper. Stir until mixed.

Next peel and shred your sweet potatoes and yellow potatoes. We used the food processor for this tonight.

Put the shredded potatoes and sweet potatoes in the bowl with your onions, garlic and spices. Add the eggs and flour and mix thoroughly. You should end up with something that looks like this:

Heat some olive oil in a pan and drop heaping tablespoons of the mixture into the frying pan.

Make sure not to over crowd the latkes in the pan, or else they'll turn out to be a soggy mess. Cook on one side until golden brown, about 5-6 minutes. Flip, and continue cooking another 3-5 minutes on the other side.

Allow to drain on a cooling rack that is set over a cookie sheet. Again, this helps save you from a large mess, and it keeps your latkes nice and crispy instead of letting them get soggy. Continue cooking until all of your batter is used up. You should get 9-10 medium sized latkes.

These were a tasty bomb of sweetness followed by a little kick. Yummy!